Breaking Free
How to Quit Your Job and Start Your Own Business
I shot some video today while walking around BA.
It’s gotten a little bit colder here lately and it was overcast today but still pretty nice.
Here is the YouTube video:
Few other random discoveries since last week:
- It’s more expensive to buy groceries here than it is to eat in restaurants. Sort of the opposite of the U.S. The people running restaurants must be buying it direct from farmers of something because they certainly aren’t buying food from grocery stores where I am. If you go try to put together a breakfast or any meal at the grocery store, it is about double the cost of just buying it at a restaurant. Luckily the restaurants are great here.
- The house comes will a full time maid – I thought this would be really awesome, but it’s really not as awesome as it seems. Our maid, while very nice, doesn’t really seem to clean much :). The first day I was here she took my towels to wash them and I have yet to see them again. I’ve tried to ask her about them a few times, and she seems to understand….yet still I have no towels. I have taken to drying my entire body with a washcloth…this I keep in my room now for fear that it will also disappear to be “washed”. All part of the South American experience!
- Shop owners here have this weird strategy: if we sell the same thing, let’s all put all our shops right next to each other. It’s sort of bizarre, they have these little “gallerias” where there will literally be 40 shops that all sell electronics or all sell leather, etc. The products in all of them are identical, prices are just about identical.
I haven’t been able to figure out why they do this because they have no way to differentiate from the other guys. Like, if you are the 40th guy to open a shop with the same products in the same location, what are you hoping to accomplish? Aside from the occasional double starbucks, business owners in the U.S. are pretty good about saying “hey I’m going to open a gym, maybe I should go where there isn’t already a gym…”. Haven’t figured this one out yet.
UniversityTutor.com Update
After my last update on how the new UniversityTutor business model wasn’t working, I’ve made some good progress.
I added the new line to all outgoing emails as I mentioned and this improved things back to 1 or 2 invoices per day almost immediately. I also added a suggestion by my mother, to also include in the email how many hours of experience and reviews the tutor currently has. This would reinforce the benefits of accumulating these.
Also, as you (my valuable blog readers) pointed out, a big reason for the change I saw was the month. School was ending! Thanks for the reminder on that one…this was an important point that I had forgotten.
In short, I will continue to test it and expand it. I’m looking at some ways to expand it to other English speaking countries in the future. After debating a lot, I feel like the current business model is the right one. The number of tutors signing up is increasing dramatically now that there is no monthly fee. It will just take some time to adopt it I think.
BuyersVote.com Update
Here is another one I could use your help one.
While there are a few more features I’d like to clean up on the site (such as designing the home page to direct people to add a page instead of search, especially in the early stages here) the site is about 90% complete feature wise for what I want.
The biggest challenge for the site now is to reach some sort of critical mass. It’s needs it’s community of early adopters who will evangelize it.
My best guess to accomplishing this right now is to partner with someone who has the permission asset to get the word out. I’ve emailed Tim Ferriss (his assistant actually) to see if I can get through to him. He will occasionally do advisory roles for things like this if he believes in it (in exchange for a small piece of the company), but he is a difficult person to reach so we’ll see.
What are your thoughts on how to accomplish this critical mass? Also, does the homepage draw first time people in well or what would be improved there? Please leave me a comment below.
Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong
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Breaking Free is a blog for people who'd like to quit their 9-to-5, start their own business, and achieve financial freedom. It's written by web-entrepreneur Brian Armstrong. You can read more here »
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Gordie Rogers
May 18th, 2009 at 12:09 am
Hi Brian,
It’s the same here in China and when I was in Korea. All the electronic places together. Not just 40 shops or so, but more than 200 shops or selling the same things for similar prices!
I think one of your readers suggested you make BuyersVote.com more regional. This would be better for people who want to know about businesses in their vicinity. Don’t forget to leave a category for products that are worldwide such as Coke, etc.
I think you could remove some of the text from the home page.
That’s just my two cents worth.
Keep up the good work.
Brian Armstrong
May 18th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Hey there Gordie….forgot to mention that I made a “location” field for all pages on BuyersVote. It’s optional of course for products that aren’t region specific, but this will help people regionalize it I think. Thanks!
Shazia
May 18th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Hey Brian! That’s the same way the shops are in Pakistan. I think it is like that so people know where the market is for that particular item. Anyway, cool video, though I didn’t see our picture in ur room!!!LOLOLOL
Brian Armstrong
May 18th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
It’s there on right side of bed, promise!
www.ManuelZeh.de
May 18th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Hey bro, I was walking around Buenos Aires once trying to buy a towel, asking people “Dónde puedo comprar una toalla?” but everybody just looked at me puzzled and didn’t seem to have any idea where to get such a thing. Eventually, like the fourth person I asked was like… “ooohh… querés comprar una TOASHA!” And I’m like… “eso… sho quero comprar una toasha para la plasha.” Haha. Maybe you need to pronounce the “ll” the Argentinian way and she’ll get it ;)
Still in Sao Paulo mate! B-)
-Manny.
Brian Armstrong
May 20th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Haha, yep I figured that one out too! They don’t speak the Mexican Spanish here. Glad to hear you are havin fun.
simona@personal development coach
May 18th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Great vid! It is strange to see so few people in such city, I assumed that it is as busy as any other major city. E.g. I live in London and there are always plenty of people around, especially on Sunday. Some streets are so crowded that you avoid them because of the tourists. They all wonder around and walk really slowly suddenly stopping and taking pictures, so you start taking alternative routes:)
About the maid:))) That reminded me of when I went to Malta to stay for some time. I was staying in a hotel and they also took the towels and even bed covers and when I said that I needed towels the lady said ok and I did not see any towels for two days:)))
I think that the reason you see many shops of the same kind in the same area is because the competitors see a shop in some area and think they will be able to take some of their customers who obviously are already interested in the stuff such shops sell. But that is of course no good because both companies profits will not be great as they will share the same amount of customers.
Brian Armstrong
May 20th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Sounds like you are quite the world traveler too Simona, thanks! :)
College Town Menus (CTM)
May 19th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Very good point – school’s out. With that, CTM’s traffic has dropped like a rock, but not worried, our registered users count is still increasing. I’m glad your feeling more confident about UT. I still think you need some tweaking with the flow of your BuyersVote site, it seemed like there were too many options and not a clear path someone should take; IMO. Will definately keep reading though. Good luck in BA!
Nathan Robertson
May 19th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Brian,
This is the same phenomenon as car dealerships. Many similar items/industries sell in the same spot as sort of a ‘mall’ effect. If you were selling specialty items in a large city, you would park them near competitors because then everyone will know where to go. If you go anywhere else, it will not be as popular because it will be more of an impulsive option for people.
Brian Armstrong
May 20th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Good comment Nathan, agreed :)
@CTM I think you’re right the buyersvote homepage needs some tweaking. perhaps in the early stages it needs some more direction to adding a page (maybe even put a simple form right on the homepage). Simpler is better.
Mononucleosis
June 1st, 2009 at 10:21 pm
I want to get a longterm apartment, not the temporary ones like they have on Craig’s list. Are there other websites that anyone can suggest?
S. Jacob Lieberman
September 27th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
What I would suggest is that you go and rent a furnished 1 bedroom
stay for 1-2 months and look around talk to people and see if you can
find something while there as its much easier. A lot of long term apartments are rented TOP and that means total of payments. In essence you rent the apartment for a year and pay the total of the
years rent upfront. You are in many instances able to negotiate to pay
6 months at a time. But, you have to be there. Can’t do it long distance.
If you speak spanish that is a big help! If not you will need someone to go with you that does. Hope that this helps!
Jacob
Brian Armstrong
September 28th, 2009 at 1:36 am
Interesting, thanks S. Jacob.
S. Jacob Lieberman
September 27th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Hi,
I read your blog and thought that I would recommend that you get in touch with the people that run ‘business in a backpack’, Darcie Connell
and Adam Costa run the business and they have a lot of very good information and will help you grow your business for a small fee (under $100). take a look at what they have to offer.
All the best,
S. Jacob